American Poverty

Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornell West discuss the need to get American poverty back on the political agenda, and in the two youtubes below.  President Obama was elected in 2008 on an anti-poverty platform, but many feel that the Obama administration has completely dropped poverty as an issue.  Journalist Amy Goodman states,

This is especially striking at a time when one in six Americans is poor, with over 16 million children living in poverty. Poverty rates for blacks and Latinos are twice as high as the rates for whites. There is greater poverty among women than men, and the rate of women living in extreme poverty has reached record highs.

The guests also note that most Americans living in poverty are white, and Dr. West states that even Richard Nixon was to the left of Obama on healthcare and a guaranteed minimum income,  asserting,

[...] it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion—poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems—ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.

Part One:

 

Part Two: 





More blogging here on Winter In America and soaring yet ignored Census figures.  Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party repeatedly states that even 1 out of 2 Americans are poor or lower income heading into poverty, and both Dr. Stein and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party campaigned on WPA-style emergency hiring that would put tens of millions of employment-displaced Americans in real jobs.  Along with forgiving the student debt (now topping 1 trillion), and opening an improved Medicare with dental and vision to the whole country.